{"id":7193,"date":"2026-09-15T15:06:57","date_gmt":"2026-09-15T13:06:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mypr.co.za\/?p=191795"},"modified":"2026-09-15T15:06:57","modified_gmt":"2026-09-15T13:06:57","slug":"technical-debt-is-now-a-boardroom-metric-not-an-it-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mypr.co.za\/mail\/technical-debt-is-now-a-boardroom-metric-not-an-it-one\/","title":{"rendered":"Technical Debt Is Now a Boardroom Metric, Not an IT One"},"content":{"rendered":"
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As AI ambitions collide with ageing architecture, technical debt is becoming a business risk that boards can no longer leave to IT to quietly manage.<\/p>\n

Johannesburg, South Africa<\/strong> \u2013 For years, technical debt was treated as an IT problem. Ageing systems, brittle integrations and hard-to-change applications created cost and complexity, but as long as the business kept operating, those problems stayed largely contained within the technology function.<\/p>\n

That containment is breaking down. Businesses are changing faster, integrating more systems, launching digital products and responding to new regulatory demands. In that environment, technical debt shows up as slower delivery, higher transformation costs and reduced flexibility. Research from Deloitte\u2019s Global Technology Leadership Study estimates that technical debt now absorbs somewhere between 21% and 40% of total IT spend, meaning for every rand or dollar an organisation puts into IT, a significant share goes toward servicing debt rather than delivering new value. A system that\u2019s difficult to change becomes a business problem the moment it delays a product launch or blocks a process redesign.<\/p>\n

According to Sasha Slankamenac, Architect in the Office of the CTO and Practice Lead: AI at Dariel, the shift is really about who now feels the consequences. \u201cTen years ago, technical debt was something an engineering team lived with and managed quietly,\u201d he says. \u201cToday, the business feels it directly, because the thing that\u2019s now constrained by that debt is the business\u2019s ability to move.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cloud migration already showed us this<\/strong><\/p>\n

Cloud migration exposed the problem clearly. \u201cMigrate first, modernise later\u201d often changed where applications ran without changing how they were built. Organisations gained newer infrastructure while carrying much of the same architectural constraint with them.
\u201cLift-and-shift doesn\u2019t remove technical debt, it just relocates it to a more expensive postcode,\u201d Slankamenac says. \u201cYou can move a poorly designed system into the cloud and it\u2019s still a poorly designed system and it\u2019s just now billed by the hour.\u201d<\/p>\n

AI is exposing the problem again, faster<\/strong><\/p>\n

If cloud migration was a slow-motion lesson, AI is a fast one. Ambitious automation and AI programmes still depend on accessible data, reliable integration and systems that can be changed safely, the exact things technical debt erodes.<\/p>\n

\u201cAI doesn\u2019t fail quietly the way legacy systems do,\u201d Slankamenac explains. \u201cIt fails visibly and fast, because it immediately exposes whether your data is trustworthy, whether your integrations are stable, and whether your architecture can actually support the thing you\u2019re asking it to do. Technical debt used to be a slow leak. Against an AI roadmap, it becomes obvious in the first sprint.\u201d<\/p>\n

He argues that this is why AI projects so often stall well before the model itself becomes the limiting factor. \u201cEveryone wants to talk about the model. The model is rarely the problem. The problem is almost always the twenty-year-old integration layer nobody wants to touch.\u201d<\/p>\n

From episodic resets to continuous discipline<\/strong><\/p>\n

There\u2019s also a funding model behind the problem. The traditional pattern was to let systems age and debt accumulate until the cost or risk became hard to ignore, then fund a large replacement or rewrite. In effect, businesses saved up for periodic resets while accepting growing inflexibility between them.<\/p>\n

That model is increasingly at odds with the pace of business change. A more sustainable approach is to continuously re-engineer the technology estate as part of normal operations, simplifying architecture, replacing brittle components, and removing constraints before they become programme-sized problems.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe mindset shift is the same one we push on engineering culture generally,\u201d Slankamenac says. \u201cStop treating architecture as something you fix in five-year cycles and start treating it as something you tend to every week. That\u2019s not a bigger budget question, necessarily, it\u2019s a different operating discipline.\u201d<\/p>\n

This also changes how technology expenditure should be thought about. Rather than treating architectural improvement mainly as an occasional capital event, organisations need a recurring capacity to keep architecture relevant to current business needs, maintaining adaptability as an ongoing operating discipline rather than something deferred until the next major rewrite.<\/p>\n

Why it belongs in the boardroom<\/strong><\/p>\n

Financial debt limits what an organisation can afford to do next. Technical debt increasingly limits what it is capable of doing next.
\u201cBoards are already comfortable asking about financial risk exposure,\u201d Slankamenac says. \u201cTechnical debt deserves the same seat at that table, because at this point, it\u2019s not a different category of risk, it\u2019s the same conversation, just measured in architecture instead of currency.\u201d Ends.<\/p>\n

About Dariel<\/strong>
Founded in 2001 on the principle of delivering solutions right, the first time, Dariel bridges the gap between human ingenuity and technology. Our strong client partnerships reflect a commitment to excellence and our consultative approach to software engineering makes us a trusted partner for innovative and sustainable tech solutions. Proudly independent, Dariel is part of the JSE-listed Capital Appreciation Group. https:\/\/www.dariel.co.za\/<\/p>\n

For more information: Samantha Hogg-Brandjes | GinjaNinja | samantha@ginjaninja.co.za | +27-84-458-4857<\/p>\n

CLICK HERE to submit your press release to MyPR.co.za<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Author<\/strong>: Samantha Hogg-Brandjes from GinjaNinja PR (PTY) Ltd on behalf of Dariel<\/strong>.<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n

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CLICK HERE to Read the Original Press Release on MyPR<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As AI ambitions collide with ageing architecture, technical debt is becoming a business risk that boards can no longer leave to IT to quietly manage. Johannesburg, South Africa \u2013 For years, technical debt was treated as an IT problem. Ageing systems, brittle integrations and hard-to-change applications created cost and complexity, but as long as the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","autoblue_enabled":true,"autoblue_custom_message":"","autoblue_shares":[{"did":"did:plc:revymtt5qssww7e7avbruzic","date":"2026-09-15T16:14:58+00:00","uri":"at:\/\/did:plc:revymtt5qssww7e7avbruzic\/app.bsky.feed.post\/3mvkzh4wq5g2w","response":"{\"uri\":\"at:\/\/did:plc:revymtt5qssww7e7avbruzic\/app.bsky.feed.post\/3mvkzh4wq5g2w\",\"cid\":\"bafyreiejvjj4f4ajpupvebmejwfbqzpikqx5b22k36uqp3ne7yfzuwvybe\",\"commit\":{\"cid\":\"bafyreia5ykehg5xfgbs7gmdgznycvv4xfyrlvxqbbd7h2hutqnu55i4kcy\",\"rev\":\"3mvkzh4wywo2w\"},\"validationStatus\":\"valid\"}"}],"autoblue_post_url":"","autoblue_publish_document":false,"republication-tracker-tool-hide-widget":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[29],"class_list":["type-post","category-news","tag-mypr-africa","entry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mypr.co.za\/mail\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mypr.co.za\/mail\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mypr.co.za\/mail\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mypr.co.za\/mail\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mypr.co.za\/mail\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7193"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mypr.co.za\/mail\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7193\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mypr.co.za\/mail\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mypr.co.za\/mail\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mypr.co.za\/mail\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}